Our Cute Kids

Shordy was wrestling around with Tiny and they were rolling around on the ground...when I all the sudden realized it was quiet and turned around from doing dishes to see what they were doing and saw this.

Shordy had her wrapped up in his legs, and she was just lying there.  I think they were watching a Baby Signing Time...just hanging out together.

One of the those cute things that makes my heart smile and realize how grateful I am we are so blessed to have two beautiful children.

Feeding Stella

It amazes me how different girls are from boys.  So, Tiny got this awesome little Stella doll for her birthday, and her Grammy Pond got her a little bottle feeding set, you know the ones that the orange juice and milk disappear into the nipple part of the bottle?  Anyway, I have no idea how she knew how to use them, b/c I've never shown her, and she has never taken a bottle (other than when she was 5 days old and my mom had to give her one when I hemorrhaged and went into the hospital).  But...this little girl knew that the bottle went in her mouth and started regularly "feeding" Stella.

She would pick her up and wrap her in her arms and hug and talk to her, then put her on the ground and put her bottle in her mouth.

It's amazing how little girls just know how do things like this.

It makes my heart smile to see her playing with her Baby Stella.  :)

Roasting Marshmallows for My Dad

We got this little pop-up kids play tent last summer, and it's spent more time being put on in-doors during the winter than outside in the summer.

But...we've had such a nice week that it got put up a couple of different days.  And, after camping on the Russian this kid loves to pretend he's built a fire, he's roasting marshmallows, and is camping.  It's pretty cute.

So, on this particular day, he had me put up his tent, built a small "fire" of little sticks and branches he found, and then asked me for some marshmallow sticks and some marshmallows.  He then proceeded to "roast" the marshmallows over his fire and informed he he was roasting marshmallows for his Dad.  He sat out there and roasted those marshmallows for quite awhile and never did eat the marshmallows...he waited for dad to come home before he ate them.  This kid sure loves his Dad!!

I just thought it was so cute how he was using his imagination and camping outside.

Just A Nice Day

I had to take pics of us just playing in the yard, b/c you never know how many of them you may get in Alaska.

So here we are just chilling in the yard, picking flowers, laying on the grass...just soaking up the sun!  Yeah for the sun!!

Sibling Pics - Part I

After taking some pics with our Tiny girl in her pretty birthday dress, we changed the kiddos into their M&M shirts Dad got for them in Las Vegas on a trip to a conference he went to.  I was able to get some cute pics of them together.  Dad did a good job of making them laugh...even if Tiny was in desperate need to take a nap.

I wish I had brought Tiny over here in the shade when she had her dress on, but I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have stayed put long enough to take a pic of her anyway.  Shordy did a good job of keeping her still enough to take pics of them.

I'm a totally biased mother, but I sure think my kiddos are pretty darn cute...and photogenic.  :)

1 Year Pics - Part II

I got this pretty little springy dress for Tiny for her birthday and I LOVE it!!  I ended up making her the little flower hair bow as well.  I actually had the fabric already in my fabric stash and it matched perfectly.  I love how well it matches!

I new I wanted to take some pics of her in her birthday dress so I thought this Sunday after church would be a good day...but it ended up being too sunny...if that's even possible in Alaska!  It was so nice and warm so I didn't really complain, but the pics would have turned out better if the sun hadn't been sooo harsh.

I did get a couple of cute pics, even with the sun being so bright.  She loves walking down the hill on our lawn...she really has no fear.  Shordy wouldn't walk down that hill forever, but this little girl has only been walking for about a month and she's already bailing down that hill...in her pretty little Sunday dress.  :)

We sure love this Tiny girl full of personality.

Dandelions - AKA: Weed Control Shordy Style

We have developed a slight dandelion problem on the driveway to our little "bungelow".  I was planning on mowing them down, but Mr. Shordy McGoo loves to pick the dandelions and bring me flowers.  It's pretty sweet actually.  So, because he's so good at picking flowers I decided to send him out to do some weed conrol...Shordy style.  :)

I gave him an empty ice cream bucket and told him to fill it up with dandelions.  He did pretty good for a little bit, but then either got bored of picking flowers or just overwhelmed by the sheer number.  I'm gonna go for the bored option.  He quite before even filling his bucket...but at least he tried.

I did end up mowing it the next day and he was completely devastated that I killed the flowers!  Seriously upset at me.  I felt a little bit bad...until I looked at the newly mowed "driveway" up there and saw how good it looked...then I didn't feel quite so bad.  :)

On another note...can you see the dead spot of grass there at the bottom of the little hill in the bottom pic...it's a place of completely dead grass from the massive amounts of snow we had this winter.  We've discovered that grass doesn't do so well when it has 4 feet of snow on it still in April!  I keep hoping it's gonna come back but when you can see dirt and zero green stuff, I'm not optimistic.

Signing Time - Again...

I know I mentioned earlier that Tiny is loving Baby Signing Time...and when I say loving it...I mean it's Baby Crack all over again!  (I have a post when Shordy was about this age with him being just as completely absorbed by the movies as she is...seriously crack for babies.)

This is the ONLY time I can get her to sit still for more than 5 minutes.  She will just lay there for the entire 25-30 minutes it's on and just watch it.  So, while I love that she's learning new signs and learning to communicate, which helps with baby/toddler frustration...I love it almost more b/c I can get a slight break from this Tiny tornado who is either in the dog water, the dog food, the plants, the dog water, the dog food, or the plants.

I love "Baby Signing Time".

Camping on The Russian

We were able to go camping on the Russian River for the opener this year and had so much fun!  We had to book the campsite 6 months in advance...and Tyler Zollinger made sure we all had our campsites booked!  We shared a campsite with Jared Tuia (Kaye and the kids had traveled down to Utah/Arizona to visit family) and Jeff Dalstrom (Shayne's old roommate), and then across from us were Ty & Liz Zollinger (and their 2 boys) and Haakon & Lyndsey Johnson (and their 4 kids) sharing another campsite.  So, we had 3 families of kids who spent lots of time running around through the woods and riding bikes around the campground.

We got there on Saturday night and set up camp.  I'm so happy to have a pop-up camper to sleep and camp in.  On Sunday most the whole group hiked up to the Russian River Falls and had lunch.  That's what the first few pics are from.  Later that night the whole group of men (which included Greg Sauers and some friends of his) packed themselves into a mini-van for a ride to the trailhead/parking lot to start fishing for Sockeye Salmon on the Russian.  They couldn't legally start fishing until midnight, but had to go early to stake out their fishing holes...b/c there are LOTS of people who come to fish the opener.  They fished until about 5 am and then hiked back to the campsite.  Shayne caught his limit and stayed up and filleted them all out and then stayed up for breakfast with the guys before coming to bed at 6:30 in the morning.

Unfortunately for me and the kids, our battery died and we lost heat around 2 in the morning.  Shordy was fine b/c I made sure he was buried in his sleeping bag with covers on top and a fleece hat on.  But Tiny won't stay under covers so she ended up waking up being cold and sleeping with me.  We actually slept pretty good together b/c we were keeping each other warm.  Thankfully, Jared at 2 batteries with his camper, but his camper wiring wasn't working and not using the batteries, so he had to use a generator to get power to his camper.  So, the next night he let us use one of his batteries so we would have heat.  Thank you Jared!

On Monday, Jared also watched the kids so Shayne & I could go back down to the river and I could catch my limit.  It was awesome of Jared to do that!  I haven't caught any Sockeye in almost 2 years b/c I didn't fish hardly at all last summer with a new baby.  It felt so good to be back in the river catching my own Reds! Shayne & I hiked to my honey hole and I promptly hooked and landed my three Reds in about 45 minutes.  It was AWESOME!!

The guys went fishing again that night, but didn't get back in quite as late b/c we had to be up and have camp cleaned up before 11.  Thankfully the weather was pretty darn awesome with only an occasional sprinkle.  It wasn't warm by any means...we usually stayed in hoodies or jackets and definitely coats by evening...but it wasn't raining so that was nice!!  The kids did great!  They slept good, they had fun with all the friends, and even Tiny stayed out of the fire.  :)  I took my Kindle and spent a lot of time reading by the fire when Tiny was either napping or kids were asleep and Shayne was fishing.  The first night of fishing all the girls hung out around a campfire and just talked which was nice too.

I say the weather was nice up until the last night when it started raining and didn't stop.  It was still raining the next morning as we were cleaning up camp, which was no fun, but at least it waited until the last day.

This is definitely something I would do again!  We had so much fun, good food, and lots of good company!